"Friends of Sharron Angle raised $28 million in a very short period of time and I remain amazed and forever grateful for the support of tens of thousands of Americans nationwide for our campaign to defeat Harry Reid. Our campaign made every effort to comply with the very complicated and complex federal reporting requirements.

As we advised the FEC, the campaign was truly a grassroots campaign. There was a national outpouring of financial support for our campaign that was literally of presidential campaign proportions -- but we did not have the administrative infrastructure of a presidential campaign. Having said that, the amounts at issue constitute less than 2% of the contributions. The unreported debts resulted from the fact that the vendors also experienced a tidal wave of support for our campaign that swamped their systems as well.

While these are technical violations, we nonetheless take them very seriously. The circumstances are such that we did all that we could possibly do to be able to properly report all receipts, expenditures and debts but the system was simply overwhelmed by the national outpouring of support."

The FEC on Monday accepted the findings of auditors that Angle's campaign failed to file or timely report 169 contributions totaling $243,750. Regarding the debt, the FEC noted Angle's campaign amended disclosure reports to "materially correct" the reporting of debts and obligations in response to interim findings by auditors.

Monday's report makes no mention of whether Angle could face civil penalties, but FEC guidelines say the commission could pursue enforcement action under a separate proceeding.

Angle won a crowded Republican primary field but lost in the November 2010 general election to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.